Alex McCurthy
Le Sserafim is a new face in K-pop, and girl groups are not your typical cute bundle of bubbly femininity. They stand at five members strong and aim to change the outlook on the industry by doing more than just nice melodies. Firm resilience, honesty, and the desire to remake expectations, especially regarding female roles in society, stands tall in their venture against the cutthroat K-pop battlefield.
Youngest member Hong Eunchae recently grabbed attention when a teaser was released for their third EP, titled Easy. In one particularly memorable scene, she does a spectacular tumble down a metal staircase, stands up, and just keeps walking-unfazed, as if nothing had even happened. “If I’m moving down the path I want to move down, tumbling and falling down doesn’t matter,” she says. And this is the attitude of Le Sserafim: no matter what hits them, they rise again.
Of course, the sound and even the intensity of Le Sserafim mirror their fearlessness. Their music is a mix of deep house beats, arena rock, and even Amapiano rhythms. Korean, Japanese, and English influences are reflected in music videos like Crazy and Antifragile, for which they received MTV Awards nominations as well as other collaborations, such as with Nile Rodgers and PinkPantheress.
They might look like a typical girl group-perfectly all polished and choreographed, totally full of energy. However, what makes them really stand out in line is their willingness to brave the unrealistic expectations often placed upon female idols. In Eve, Psyche, and Bluebeard’s Wife, a song born out of the rife examples of women who resist societal pressures, it is from Kim Chaewon’s lips that pressure to perform comes: “Smile bigger for the crowd/ Shut up, shut up, now shut your feelings out.” Candidness follows in Good Bones, where Huh Yunjin calls out the critics, asking “You think it’s okay to degrade someone / Just because they’re true to themselves?
Yunjin reflects on the duality that Le Sserafim strives to express: strength alongside vulnerability. She explains, “As a group, we’re always trying to show that duality of being strong but also being vulnerable. But no matter what happens, we’ve got each other, and that gives us resilience.” The group has had a unique rise to fame. Their origin stories are diverse, but all of them arrived at Source Music, their own label, at different points in their lives. At 26 years of age, Sakura is the eldest and, probably for that reason, the one with the most experience. She has appeared in several bands and groups, most especially KT48, AKB48, and more recently, Iz*One. Yunjin is from New York, and when she was still in school, she studied opera and, while that hasn’t led to a fairytale ending in opera, did eventually steer her into K-pop. Eunchae was barely 17 years old with only 15 months worth of training before she debuted. Former ballerina from the Netherlands, Kazuha, as well, was another who joined the group just a mere five months before their very first single was released.
It is the diversity and the different strengths that each member brings, making it such a dynamic and eclectic group, namely, Le Sserafim.
However, the journey of this group is not free from hits either. As one of the six original members, Kim Garam, was also axed from the group amid allegations of bullying back when she was in high school. More significantly, before this year, the group faced flak for their performance during Coachella wherein some netizens pointed out vocal vulnerabilities. “The recent incident at Coachella just happened when we ‘just got excited and lost control'”, Chaewon countered. Part of the reason why Le Sserafim are recognizably themselves today is how willing they are to open up about their struggles. The star of the documentary Make It Look Easy, which follows the band through intimate moments, Chaewon breaks down in tears: “I don’t really know how to be happy.” Sometimes, the pressures of the industry, she admitted, made her feel like giving up.
Kazuha also shares her feelings concerning her anxieties, showing how sometimes she is confident of herself and her capabilities but at others despairs of even doing better.
Especially for those who spent most of their lives there, Yunjin is especially effusive about wanting to shake up the tight norms of the K-pop industry. “Idols need to do this, do that. There are all these unspoken rules,” she explains. Indeed, in her solo song, I ≠ DOLL, she speaks of how idols are treated as products. She sings, “They pick apart my body and throw the rest away. Idol doesn’t mean your doll to [expletive] with.”. Amidst the many hardships, Le Sserafim remained extremely close to each other and to the fans. Proof of that can be found in a song like Chasing Lightning, in which they share light-hearted anecdotes, or their latest single, 1-800 Hot N Fun, which documents a wild night out.
In the song, members of the band are joking around as they search for the member named Sakura and laugh all the while in saying, “She’s waiting downstairs in the lobby.” This playfulness shows the chemistry of the group, like good sense of humor the group also portrays in their web series Leniverse.
Not being veterans of the scene by any stretch, however, has not been ignored by the presence of Le Sserafim. Fans can’t wait for their next drop and already speculate it’ll be the final piece of the trilogy of Easy, Crazy, and perhaps Hot. Yunjin is leading with the title being “hot, cold, or warm,” but one thing is certain: whatever they throw out will surely be powerful. In a world that often rules through the power of perfection above all else, it is refreshing to be in the presence of Le Sserafim who talk of their flaws and transform them into strengths. Their very name-the anagram of “I’m fearless-is quite aptly the essence of the group. This honesty, resilience, and determination to question the norm should assure that they will be poised to make a difference within K-pop and beyond.
